NYC has gone nearly a week without a murder

NEW YORK — New York City has gone nearly a week without a murder this holiday season, putting it on pace to close a second straight year with fewer than 300 slayings, police statistics show.

The most recent killing happened just before 1 a.m. on Dec. 21, when cops found a 32-year-old man with a gunshot wound in his back at the corner of Boston Road and East 169th Street in The Bronx, according to the NYPD. The man was pronounced dead at Lincoln Hospital.

That was the last of the 283 murders the Police Department had recorded as of Sunday, NYPD data show, three fewer than in the same period last year.

The city’s six-day murder-free streak covering the Christmas holiday is about half the record of 12 days that passed without a killing in early 2015, according to news reports from the time.

Crime has continued to fall from 2017’s historic lows. Last year ended with 290 murders, marking the first time the annual body count had fallen below 300 since 1951.

Brooklyn has set a new record low with 97 murders this year to date, marking an 11.8 percent drop from 2017 and the first year with fewer than 100 killings in the borough since record-keeping began, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s office announced Thursday.

“In Brooklyn, we are leading the way in implementing initiatives that strengthen trust in the criminal justice system while keeping communities safe,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “Working with the NYPD, we are continuing to see declines in most crimes, with another historic low in homicides.”

Across the city, the seven most serious offenses — murder, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny, and auto thefts — are down 1.5 percent so far this year with 93,747 crimes recorded as of Sunday, according to NYPD data.

Five of those seven categories have seen decreases, with robberies down 7.9 percent, crime statistics show. The NYPD has also recorded a 4 percent drop in shootings so far this year with 741 incidents.

But rape has spiked 22.4 percent citywide in 2018, with police recording over 300 more rapes as of Dec. 23 than at the same point in 2017. Police officials have attributed the dramatic rise to increased reporting stemming from the #MeToo movement and the NYPD’s efforts to encourage survivors to come forward.

Grand larcenies have also ticked up 0.3 percent so far this year, police data show.